Field of the Invention
The inventions disclosed and taught herein relate generally to reduced-calorie natural sweeteners and methods for their production. More specifically, the inventions disclosed and taught herein are related to processes for the manufacture of reduced-calorie sweetener compositions that include sucrose and natural sweeteners, such as Stevia or other sweet glycosides from Stevia Rebaudiana, using a co-crystallization process, and the unique product resulting therefrom exhibiting flavor and physical characteristics similar to natural sugar.
Description of the Related Art
People often customize the taste of their food and beverages by adding sweeteners thereto. For example, tabletop sweeteners are added to beverages, such as coffee and tea; on cereals; on fruit; and as toppings on baked goods. Sweetening a food or beverage with a tabletop sweetener alters its flavor and usually increases its appeal to the consumer.
Personal taste creates considerable variability in the amount of sweetness that one person prefers in a given food or beverage versus another person. For example, the amount of sweetness incorporated into a foodstuff during commercial production may not be adequate to satisfy some consumers while other consumers may find that the same amount of sweetness to be excessive. Moreover, consumers often desire to reduce their caloric intake for health or lifestyle reasons. Therefore, there exists a long-felt need for tabletop sweetener products that consumers may use to increase the sweetness of a product at the time of consumption that are consistent with their personal preferences and minimize additional caloric burden, such as in the form of reduce-calorie sweeteners. Tabletop sweeteners are a primary vehicle by which such taste customization is accomplished. Tabletop sweeteners are presently available in many different forms, including, free-flowing granular, tablets, cohesive non-free flowing compositions (e.g., cubes), and the like.
Many types of sweeteners are available as tabletop sweeteners. These include natural sweeteners, such as, sucrose (i.e., cane sugar), honey, high fructose corn syrup, molasses, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, fruit juice sweeteners, barley malt, Stevia and the like, as well as artificial sweeteners, such as, sucralose, aspartame, Acesulfame potassium, saccharin and the like.
Commonly available sweeteners have slightly different tastes that are variably preferred by individuals. Many sweeteners, particularly the non-natural sweeteners, impart a bitter taste to the foods they sweeten. Saccharin, for example, is a sweetener that is known to impart a bitter taste. Other sweeteners have other taste components such as lingering metallic tastes, cooling or drying sensations, or combinations of such undesirable characteristics and flavor sensations. In some cases, food ingredients have been used to overcome the bitterness. For example, cream of tartar is included in commonly sold saccharin packets.
The most common sweeteners are the so-called “nutritive” sweeteners. Nutritive sweeteners not only provide sweetness, but are also absorbable into the bloodstream and may be metabolized to provide energy for immediate use or for storage as fat. Nutritive sweeteners are typically extracted from plants that produce them in various quantities and for various purposes. For example, sucrose, a nutritive sweetener in wide spread use, is produced from many sources, e.g., sugar cane and sugar beet roots.
Sugar alcohols are another form of sweetener. Sugar alcohols vary in sweetness from about half as sweet to about as sweet as sucrose. Accordingly, sugar alcohols may be used in place of sugar. Sugar alcohols have about one-half to three-quarters the amount of calories of sugar on a per weight basis. Sugar alcohols are slowly and incompletely absorbed from the small intestine into the blood. Absorbed sugar alcohols are converted to energy by processes that require little or no insulin. Accordingly, these sweeteners may be used by diabetics or those on low-carbohydrate diets.
High intensity sweeteners are well known alternatives to nutritive sweeteners. High intensity sweeteners provide sweetness without the calories and other metabolic impacts of the nutritive sweeteners. In many cases, high intensity sweeteners provide a sweet flavor that is preferred to nutritive sweeteners. Some high intensity sweeteners, such as, aspartame, are nutritive, but are so intense that they still provide negligible calories because very small amounts are required. Other high intensity sweeteners, such as, for example sucralose, are not absorbed when ingested and are, therefore, non-nutritive sweeteners.
Often, the manufacturers or users of these sweeteners add other components to them to overcome a less pleasant taste, for example, a bitter taste. For example, cream of tartar may be added to saccharin to offset its bitterness; and 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid may be added to sucralose to control lingering sweetness. However, with the growing trend towards natural food products among consumers, the use of such synthetic or non-natural additives to the sweetener products to offset unpleasant taste effects is undesirable.
In view of these issues, there is increasing interest in the use of naturally-occurring, non-caloric sweeteners, particularly those derived from or extracted from plants or other natural products. Stevia, an extract of the native South American plant Stevia Rebaudiana Compositae Bertoni, has been used for years by itself as a sweetener in South America, Asia, and more recently, Europe. The Stevia plant is commercially cultivated in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Israel, India, Brazil, Australia and Paraguay. Stevia is one of several non-caloric natural sweeteners from Stevia rebaudiana bertoni—the plant produces a number of sweet compounds collectively referred to as steviol glycosides, which make Stevia 300 times sweeter than sucrose alone. One particular extract, rebaudioside A, is a non-caloric sweetener with functional and sensory properties much superior to those of many other non-caloric sweeteners, and which in processed form can be 70 to 400 times more potent than sugar. These steviol glycosides can be extracted from the plant using a variety of natural product extraction processes described in the art. These naturally-occurring sweeteners are heat stable, pH stable, do not ferment, and do not induce a glycemic response in humans. However, Stevia and Stevia plant extracts also have a strong bitter component which makes their use in sweeteners more challenging.
Of the diterpenoid glycoside sweeteners identified to date in Stevia extracts, rebaudioside A has been identified as the least astringent, the least bitter, and with the least persistent aftertaste. This aftertaste has been described by many as bitter and licorice like, and is present in all current Stevia extracts. However, rebaudioside A (and the other diterpenoid gylcosides) still exhibits flavor and taste characteristics that distinguish it from sugar. Thus, while Stevia extracts have many excellent properties, improvements in their taste profile would clearly be desirable.
Like with all high-intensity sweetener-containing sweetener compositions, Stevia containing sweetener compositions typically have been provided with a bulking agent to aid in measurement and distribution into the users application. Among those disclosed or used include FOS and other fibers, maltodextrins, and erythritol. Erythritol is especially popular as it can mitigate some of the bitter taste. Further, due to the poor solubility of Stevia and Stevia-related glycosides in many solvents, particularly solvents which can be used in food-related products, it's introduction into products such as sugar and other sweeteners has, for the most part, been limited to blending processes, which suffers from lack of uniform mixing despite the blending process employed, and an associated disfavored sweetness flavor profile.
It has been interestingly discovered herein that in sweetening compositions including simple sugars such as sucrose and natural sweeteners such as Stevia extracts, the bitter/licorice taste of the natural sweetener (e.g., rebaudioside A) is modulated by simple sugars (e.g., refined sucrose), but not by complex sweeteners, e.g., maple and molasses. This is surprising as complex sugars have an inherent multidimensional taste would tend to “hide” the licorice note from the rebaudioside. Even more surprising, the simple sugars, which have only sweet taste, modulate the licorice note from rebaudioside A even when they contribute less than half the sweetness of the sweetening composition. Thus, it is surprising that the combination of low Stevia levels, high purity rebaudioside A, and a simple refined sugar, such as sucrose or fructose, creates a sweetener composition with much lower characteristic licorice taste of Stevia. These have not been previously used due to the apparent contradiction of using a simple sugar in formulations which are inherently sugar substitutes.
The inventions disclosed and taught herein are directed to an improved, reduced calorie sweetener composition containing naturally-occurring sweeteners (such as Stevia or Stevia diterpenoid glycosidic extracts) and sucrose, as well as an improved method of preparing such products that includes a controlled co-crystallization process to form the new, co-crystalline product having a flavor profile substantially similar to pure sugar.